Councilors make a mountain of appointments from maunga authorities

The issue of council appointments at the Tūpuna Maunga Authority sparked a lengthy and at times prickly debate at a meeting of the Auckland Council’s governing body on Thursday.

Councilors considered appointments to other co-government entities, which were usually passed relatively quickly, but the debate over appointments at the Tūpuna Maunga Authority provided insight into how contentious issues could be rolled out for councilors in their three-year term.

The authority is a co-government council, made up of mana whenua representatives and Auckland Council representatives, to manage 14 ancestral mountains around Auckland.

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown told Thursday’s meeting that the three appointments from the governing body and three appointments of local board members to the authority would be delegated to the Performance and Appointments Committee.

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It then became clear that Brown intended the three appointments not to be elected councillors.

“People have come forward who have a significant interest in this,” Brown said, adding that he thought it would be an opportunity for the committee to select “senior people who represent strong interests in the Tūpunga Maunga Authority.” Stuff understands that Brown was referring to members of the Honor The Maunga group.

North Shore Councilman Chris Darby reacted strongly to Brown’s suggestion to appoint unelected representatives: “We don’t do things that way. That’s cherry picking.”

Brown said no councilor had raised his hand to be part of the authority during his lengthy discussions with them about their individual interests.

“This is growing into a maunga of its own,” Brown said when questions were raised about the timeline of the appointments and how that could affect the authority’s operations.

“Are we going to hear the chainsaws start before we get the appointments to the body?” Councilman Chris Fletcher asked.

Brown then called for a show of hands for councilors who would like to be appointed to the authority, with councilors Alf Filipaina, Josephine Bartley and Kerrin Leoni expressing their interest before continuing the debate.

In response to a question from the mayor about whether she would be interested in the role, Fletcher said her interest was conditional on there being the opportunity to address controversial issues.

Two more councilors then raised their hands for the scrolls, bringing the number of councilors expressing interest in the three scrolls to six.

“It’s like a table of three, if we wait another five minutes we might have nine,” Councilman John Watson joked.

“The other thing that could fix this is lunch,” Brown said, as the debate looked set to continue into the afternoon.

Returning from their sandwiches, the councilors quickly agreed to postpone the appointments until their November 24 meeting.

Asked if the drawn-out debate was indicative of how contentious issues could play out during this board’s term, Brown said Stuff it was a “rumbling about something that wasn’t really that important”, while other things were quickly over.

“Maybe I should have called a little earlier for lunch. Once they had a sandwich, they dealt with it pretty quickly,” Brown said.

Councilors also approved Brown’s chosen committee structure, with Councilman Chris Darby taking his vote “against the megacommittee”. Darby was referring to the creation of the Planning, Environment and Parks Committee which will bring together work dealt with by three committees on the previous council.

“That workflow from those three former committees is huge,” said Darby, who expressed concern that the size of the new committee’s workload would mean less oversight of council-controlled organizations.

“In your attempt to do more with less, you run the risk of achieving less with less when more scrutiny is required,” Darby said.

told Brown Stuff Councilors Richard Hills and Angela Dalton, the chair and deputy chair of that committee, had assured him they were looking forward to the workload.